Inspirations and Refferences

[miokalia]

This thread is about what inspires certain things about your NS nation either in NS and/or on the forum RP. You can also talk about what things/characters/events are actually referrences to, and what's original. I figure this would be interesting because it's interesting to see how ideas come together to synthesize new ones.

[The Union of Tinis]

Where to start?

A number of elements in Tinis come from a previous conceptualization of a place called Tinis that I employed in some writings from a ways back. The main differences being that those writings believe it or not were more fantastic in nature (both in technology and in more arcane modes) and Tinis was not a nation, but a planet. And in those stories, the word Tinis meant The World.

The idea for the houses stems I guess from the five races from 'world-tinis', but the resemblance drops off a bit after that with the exception of the first house.

The first house of pre-Union Tinis is based loosely off the Apolytam of 'world-tinis'. By most they are seen as blood thirsty monsters who would soon as eat you as look at you. However they are as smart as the other races on 'world-tinis' and only have a taste for the flesh of the other intelligent peoples because they had envolved from predators, and had not been discouraged from such behavior by a dictator with super natural powers who came to rule over them.

Now that I'm thinking back a bit to when all these concepts were origionally coming togeather, and because some of the influences of my youth are once again available for viewing, I suspect the Apolytam-1st house might have an air of the Zentradi from Robotech to them. Though by the time it came to the first house, a militant force of arms reliant group, the concept of mind boggling large 'monsters' had largerly dissapeared. But the militarism remained to a good part, and like the Zentradi in Robotech after the war, not all in the first house were happy after the formation of the Union and struggled against the imposition of order on Tinis, which was also a bit of a feature from 'world-Tinis' but not one I got to play with much since I stopped writing that story a while back now.

Arx also was adapted from the old stories, and was itself inspired a bit from Final Fantasy 7's Midgar. Midgar being a circular radial city with a power hungry leader in the middle transformed into the older stories into Wune's capital city (though a bit more low tech at the start of those stories). Through the course of those stories Wune was pushed out of Arx and it became a capital of an attempt at a utopia, much like Furry fed tinis is, and large skyscrapers and the works were built upon the old medival-ish city. For the furry fed, I dropped the history behind it and banished Wune to Pargalo so that Arx could be rebuilt in my mind scratch and built by scratch in today's TInis.

I could poke a few other things but tis getting late.

[miokalia]

Miokalia - (Is an original name. I actually just made it up)

Now there is a lot about the nation which is aesthetically based on other things.

Politically, it is based on a synthesis of ideas. Much of which has come from sci-fi writter Cory Doctorow's novels. In particular, "Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom", which inspired the A LOT of the sociological scenario of Miokalia.

I've based much of the culture and gestaldt of the nation on stuff I occasionally see on the Tech/Culture/Sci/Pol blog, BoingBoing.

However my inspiration for 'daily life' in Miokalia is based a lot on stuff I see on the 'World Changing' blog (They also have a book out now too, I have it, it's awesome if you're into that kind of thing).

There are many different philosophies at play here with different things. With environment, Miokalia is based on a philosophy that ALL, (ALL) problems can be solved with science. And that environmental problems are only problems when they cause detriment to the species or sustaining it's way of life.
This philosophy is environmentally friendly in some areas of ecology: Sustainability deems pollutants to be a threat to the species, and so contamination is seen as a problem, however biodiversity can ALSO be a threat to the species...
TO put it simply, Miokalia will install wind-power plants and use electric cars and have cities full of bikes and pedestrians to keep the air and water clean, while at the same time, allowing obscure and reletively unknown species of whatever to go extinct without much thought at all. This is based on the idea that nature is neither sentient or intelligent, and is simply the product output of a set of rules which govern the universe, therefore, it is not capable of experiencing things, and is a resource.

The institutionalized Atheism in Miokalia is different from most other institutionalized atheism in other sci-fi scenarios in that: it does not accompany insitutionalized totalitarianism.
In the 20th century, institutionalized atheist governments (or governments intolerant of religious practice, such as the USSR or PRC), would have to use totalitarian tactics to keep the people from practicing religions. This was for the prupose of deifying the state. So that the state was, to the people, God.
Miokalia's institutionalized atheism is a lot less nasty and absolute. It differs greatly in its practice as well as it's source.
Miokalian atheism stems not from dictatorship but rather APATHY.
Cory Doctorow suggests via the character Jules in "Down and Out.." that once a species has established absolute control over it's existence, is capable of extending life indefinately and constructing their own bodies how they want, then religion is no longer relevant. It is a kind of 'obsolecence' of the soul. The intangible is no longer of any concern to the average person.
In Miokalia, the Dincotians (The Dinosaur Theropod Species) has genetically modified itself so much and introduced nano-technology to rebuild parts of the body so widely that the species is almost completely biologically engineered. As a result, over time they have become atheist through circumstance. As an additional twist... they're also atheist through physiology. The species lacks the chemicals that trigger 'ecstatic religious experience' in the brain from a genetic modification which happened hundreds of years ago. For this species, the ability to break down the mental walls between the self and the world has been reduced to a simple switch and drugs... the spiritual sense has been lost completely for them.

The Malych are an interesting approach to an AI rampancy scenario.
Instead of an AI becoming rampant, and becoming malevolent and attempting to consume or assimilate mindlessly... The Malych are completely different result of 'naturally occouring' artificial intelligence.
The Malych are basically an organic species in every way but their physiology. They are organic Dincotian minds with mechanical resources, in essense.
This idea is a synthesis of stuff I picked up from Doctorow's AI scenarios, where AIs can naturally occour and when they do... have somewhat organic personalities (From stories such as "I, Rowboat"), and where organic intelligence can be copied to electronic means and back again without loss or death (From "Down and Out").
Because Malych are a society, they have a system of morality. This is something often left-out in AI rampancy scenarios. Where there is any sustainable society, there is morality. There has to be a set of rules for the mutual good, rules designed to protect the tribe and protect it's members. (Part of this idea came from some Issac Asimov theories as well as the movie "AI". It's refferential of classical Sci-Fi stuff.)
Most importantly, the Malych are initially atheist in that they have no concept of 'perfection'. The word, in it's meaning of a potential status of something which exists or is feasible, does not exist in their language. As a result pursuit of 'perfection' as many other Rampancy scenarios tend to play with, is something completely foreign to these AIs. They are flawed, and they are okay with that.
Identity is more important to them than efficiency, which is why they are all herpetomorphic (reptile-shaped) instead of any number of more efficient and effective configurations.

Aesthetically, I base their design and look off of such reletively vapid and/or vacuuous characters from the Zoids franchise, as well as a (very) few from the Digimon series.
This is simply because I like the way they look...

Ok, and I'll admit that find some of them 'attractive' in that yiffy way.

Moving on:

The Kohotohkhan language which I sometimes have my characters break out into in italics in conversations is an invention of my own. It is a language which has four "tones", which instead of being changes in inflection, they are changes in accent. These accents are roughly equivalent to the sounds of: Russian, Japanese, Brazillian Portuguese, and French. (sometimes bits of German too).
Thus, the spoken language sounds like an odd mix of these languages.
The language is written in it's own writting system which is simultaneously both an alphabet and a syllabary. Similar to Korean, however a lot less orderly and with a lot more leeway with regards to how to assemble the syllable characters from alphabetical components.
The alphabetical components are based DIRECTLY off of the Clawrite alphabetical system which some of you may or may not have heard of.
Thus, the language looks like Clawrite, with letters occasionally stuck on top, or below, or inside eachother to form syllables.

The architecture of Miokalia...
well, I could go on about that for a VERY long time. But I won't


The music of Miokalia:
Is based on a lot of independent music. What happens when regionality disappears but people still want to hear local artists.
Indie music paradise.

The Space-Travel thing.
Coaxial drive is from an episode of Star-Trek. It is the drive that folds space and it only shows up once and basically gets breif mention. The rules and other details of its implementation in my RPs and NS stuff is mostly made up by me though. So really, it's only based on Star-Trek in a very loose sense.

Doron and his physics:
Are pseudoscience based on numerous stuff and some made up "wouldn't it be cool if..." types of ideas.

The leaders of Miokalia:
Are based on different ideas I've had for leaders and politics.


I know most ppl here make their own online fursona the executive leader of their nation. I don't do that. Mine (Hako Dorriker, a non-anthro Raptor/Allosaurus mix) is not all that steeped in politics at all, and has only shown up once so far in any RP.
I'm thinking of showing up again in an RP soon, but my character will likely not do a whole lot. As he is neither military or politician.

That's all I can think of right now.

[Ciata]

Well, I obviously made up many of the names myself, and have been using them in private fantasies for some time now. I'd have to say that the first time that I realized that there was any type of serious fandom was an article in the back of a boy's life magazine that had a furry tiger on it and something like, "This kitty is not nice" and I thought he was. Then I read the man-Kazin wars books, and then I saw that that guy was connected to someone on some big furry site, and from then on, I was changed forever, realizing that I wasn't the only one out there.

Inspiration for Ciata though, obviously my religious views in there, also my hatred for firearms that comes from my family's bad history with firearms, which includes 3 accidental killings of family members and multiple wars. I love kung fu movies, I just do, hence my love of kung fu, and kung fu is a million times cooler than karate. One image in particular gave me a love for snow leopard furries, and it was one of the very first furry drawings I ever saw.



From there on I had this romance of a snow leopard guy and a snow leopard girl.

Let's see, Opalance Calaminion I made up, means unity withing and without, and serving through pain. I made up virtually all of my names I used, though I did take Reana from Renamon, and Mara from a Redwall book.

I did grow up having piles of stuffed critters, my favorite being Tiger, which developed into Cy, a huge tiger to protect me.

Can't think of much else, my fantasy world growing up was largely self contained and developed.

[Erenmor]

Erenmor is a mix of a load of influences from all over... let's see now:

The base idea is derived from my roleplaying on Furcadia, a nation founded from refugees from one place or another, controlled by a once-organic AI. Most of the droid patterns are also derived from there, as are some of the AI personas.

The technology ideas are derived from too much time spent playing Alpha Centauri, for the most part.

Faust is heavily inspired by the character of the same name from the Guilty Gear series of games.

Ferrin Moon is the effect of a few games of Gunman Chronicles...

The whole "Builder" religion of the machines (and the design on Erenmor's flag) come from Thief 2: the Metal Age.

The look of Erenmor's network is heavily inspired by the movie and game "Tron".

[miokalia]

Ok recent stuff:
Karak is based on a character of similar description from a less-than-mediocre, and obscure comic book released only in the UK during the early 80's.

I suppose I ought to clear this up to, because of the many different concepts of what dinosaurs looked like floating around right now.
The Dincotians are not of a 'conventional' evolutionary path.
Instead of getting all feathery and bird-like (enentually becoming birds), like Earth dinosaurs supposedly did, The dinosaurs in Miokalia are scaled, only sometimes with a few feathers along the spine at most.
Despite there being three different 'species' being referred to, these are more like 'ethnicities', since Miokalia's theropods and raptors are genetically compatible, close to the same size, and just different in proportion and build.
And of course, in very rare circumstances, like Lecithin Diiy's, they are 'anthropomorphic' in some features (More upright, more human shape). 99% of them are totally non-anthropomorphic in the way they look.
I didn't really get this idea from anything that I can remember, I'm pretty sure I just made all that up.

The dragons of course, are less of the anthropomorphic/fantasy/mythical kind, and more of the 'winged monitor lizard' sort of look.
They are non-anthropomorphic (in general). They have bat-like wings, lots of pointy black horns and beedy black eyes.
Unlike mythical dragons, they have no hair, no mane, no crests, no feathers. They are fairly plain and undecorated.
I have a poster somewhere that basically has a dragon of this description on it, and I pretty much based the 'Daeronese' off of it.

In case you're wondering where all the 'other' dinosaurs are (the herbivorous and quadrupedal ones)... well, like I said the evolutionary path for them is a bit different. And in the Dincotian evolutionary path, only raptors, allosaurs, t-rexes and a few other theropods become 'sentient' and begin using tools and become 'sapient'. Other iconic dinosaurs become extinct as things change. Theropods survive because they learn to farm, ranch and use fire, and thus, become civilized.
So sorry, there are no brachiosaurs, triceratops or whatever that are going to be showing up from Miokalia at least.

There are a some Stegosaurs, but they have changed drastically and are basically allosaurs with big plates on their backs. They're no longer quadrupedal and are pretty much theropods (no longer herbivores, but now omnivorous), BUT they are extremely rare.
Also, a random idea.


Also, both Dincotians and Daeronese are totally lactose intolerant and thus, dairy is a foreign (and slightly unnerving) concept to them. (Although Almond milk is becoming more common)
This is because it makes sense to assume that reptiles, which do not give live birth or have milk-producing mammary glands (or even breasts for that matter) totally lack the enzymes to digest milk.